As stakeholders in the federal school lunch program resume their battle over reauthorization, some foodservice directors are still struggling to maintain their indoor voices.
Nearly a month has passed since Congress failed to reauthorize the National School Lunch Program, which provides free or reduced-cost lunches to children from families in need. But emotions remain high among the K-12 feeders who provide the reimbursed meals.
“I’m disappointed in Congress kicking the can down the road,” said Chris Burkhardt, director of child nutrition at Ohio-based Lakota Local School District, adding that, directors like him need some of the problems created by the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act to be resolved.
“Congress is keenly aware of those problems and needs to move swiftly and decisively to reauthorize the program, but also provide flexibility to the existing ‘one size fits all’ model,” he said. “I hope they [Congress] can come together in December and make those common sense decisions that CN [child nutrition] directors across the country so desperately need.”
Meredith Statler, director of dining services at The Lovett School, echoed Burkhardt’s sentiments, stating that Congress has “missed the boat.” She finds the wastefulness of the system, a result of children being required to take certain items off the serving line even though they have no intention of eating them, to be particularly troubling.
“I understand we need to present good nutrition to children, but it’s a shame we are forcing them to eat food they do not want to and therefore they don’t,” she said. “There’s millions of dollars being spent on the school nutrition program and now, more than ever, it’s going in the trash.”
“We’ve gone a little too far—too fast—to bring them around to eating more nutritiously,” Statler added.
Recent news reports have indicated that since the nutritional standards were updated in 2010, student participation has declined and plate waste has increased, and those are just some of the unforeseen problems with the law. Many school foodservice professionals had hoped the reauthorization process would provide an opportunity to deliver on the program’s laudable effort of feeding hungry kids.
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Although some students at South Dakota-based Yankton School District are getting accustomed to foods that meet the federal guidelines, the district is still getting pushback, according to the Child Nutrition Supervisor Sandy Kramer. “You can’t push children into something that they aren’t ready for, change has to be gradual,” she said. “Congress thinks that doing nothing is okay, but in our case it’s not. We still have to move forward.”
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Brenda Padilla sees a silver lining. The director of nutrition services at Sacramento City Unified School District wonders if the wait time will ensure that Congress does the right thing in reauthorizing the program.
“I prefer that Congress holds off until they are certain they have safeguarded against nutritional and fiscal unintended consequences,” she says. “That takes time to bring stakeholders together and didn’t happen in the last CN reauthorization,” she said.
Like other school districts across the country, Chesapeake Public Schools, has experienced a decline in student participation—especially with the mandate that requires students to take a fruit or vegetable—says Joanne Kinsey, director of school nutrition at CPS. But despite the decline, she’s still optimistic about the future.
“This will be one of those periods of times in school history where we’ve had challenges—and there may be some pain points along the way—but we will continue to offer programming and meet those challenges.”
This week the School Nutrition Association, a professional organization representing CNs, teamed up with the School Superintendents Association to urge key Congressmen to adjust and reauthorize the bill that makes the school lunch program possible.
Among the requests the partners made was an increase in reimbursement levels. The additional cost of complying with the more stringent rules set in 2010 amounts to 10 cents per lunch and 27 cents per breakfast, the organizations stated in a letter they jointly sent to key members of Congress. Yet the reimbursement was increased at that time by only six cents per meal.
The program is currently being funded as a result of the emergency continuity bill that Congress passed in the final minutes of September. The measure expires in December.
Whether the program is improved or merely extended, the overriding interest of the foodservice industry remains the same, according to Nancy Weiss, director of foodservice at Santa Barbara Unified School District. “Still and always, the only thing that matters is feeding our students, our kids, only the freshest, most wholesome food possible.”